The invention concerns a shoe with a central closure, particularly a sport, recreation or rehabilitation shoe, with a central closure to which one or more rope-like tension elements are coupled and can, depending on the manner of activation, be shortened or elongated, whereby the tension element(s) can either extend, via deviation elements provided either on the shaft of the shoe or possibly also on an instep cover, back to the central closure and/or one tension element or both tension elements, particularly their ends, can be attached on the shaft or on the instep cover.
Such a shoe is disclosed in commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/715,464, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,882, and which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Pat. No. 5,117,567, and is known from corresponding German Utility Model Application 9016325. This shoe has established itself very well as a sports and recreation shoe having a low top upper and a single, revolving tension element. The noted application also describes an example in which one single central closure is used for two tension elements; but does not describe the full details of the central closure device itself.
However, such central closures, which use a rotary tensioning device to wind and unwind a rope-like tension element, have been known for sports shoes of the type used for skiing. An example of such a rotary tensioning device can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,177. A manually releasable ratchet mechanism is used to secure the tension element in the position to which it has been tightened. This central closure includes a single rope pulley to which a tension element is attached and a ring of ratchet teeth that are engaged by a spring biased detent prong to fix and release the rope pulley.
If a central closure of the noted types are used in a shoe having a high top upper, such as is common on basketball shoes, the problem occurs that different closure paths can exist in the area of the instep or the front of the foot than in the high top portion covering the ankle area or other regions of the shoe; this depends upon the foot or leg structure of the wearer and also upon the socks and/or other possible leg coverings which can possibly even extend into the throat of the shoe. In addition to this, the high top portion must, usually, be opened further than the portion of the shoe in the area of the instep or the front of the foot to ensure a comfortable entry and exit.